EastWest Bank offers new trust fund

MANILA, Philippines - East West Banking Corp. launched its latest investment product allowing its clients to benefit from the country’s booming economy.

Angel Marie Pacis, trust officer at EastWest, said the bank’s latest unit investment trust fund (UITF) offering investments in companies listed at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) would enable its clients to ride on the growth of the country’s economy.

The EastWest PSEi Tracker Fund is a peso-denominated fund that invests in stocks of PSE-listed companies. These index stocks are companies with proven track record and high daily volume of stock trades.

“This is because the fund matches the composition and weights of the stocks comprising the stock exchange index. This strategy is called indexing. Index stocks are usually blue-chip companies whose business performance is closely tied-in to the state of the economy,” Pacis said.

She pointed out the growth of the stock market as measured by the PSE index averaged at 15 percent per year between December 2005 and October this year, reflecting the country’s strong economic performance

The Philippines fell into recession in 1998 as its domestic output as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) contracted 0.6 percent due to the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Since then, the country’s GDP growth has been sustained for 67 consecutive quarters.

The country’s GDP growth accelerated to six percent in the third quarter of the year from the revised 5.8 percent in the second quarter due to robust domestic demand and improving government spending.

Managed by EastWest Trust Group, Pacis said the new offering seeks to mirror the returns of the local stock index, which reflects the overall prospects of the Philippine economy.

For just P10,000, an investor could benefit from a diversified portfolio of 30 index stocks. 

The Fund’s trust fee of 0.75 percent is one of the most competitive in the market. This new UITF from EastWest Bank is for the beginner or busy investors who want to participate in the potential returns of the Philippine stock market while avoiding the tedious process of individual stock analysis.

She added more UITFs are in the pipeline of EastWest to complement the existing offering to investors.

The bank’s latest investment offering complements the wide variety of other UITF’s that include the EastWest Peso Money Market Fund, the EW Peso Intermediate Term Bond Fund, the EW Peso Long Term Bond Fund, the EW Dollar Intermediate Term Bond Fund, the EW Dollar Long Term Bond Fund, and the EW PhilEquity Feeder Fund.